Category: God
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The Question of the Reality of God: Wittgensteinian Fideism No Answer
Taking a Wittgensteinian line, D. Z. Phillips construes the question of the reality of God as like the question of the reality of physical objects in general, and unlike the question of the reality of any particular physical object such as a unicorn. Phillips would therefore have a bone to pick with Edward 'Cactus Ed' Abbey…
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God and Evil, Mind and Matter
It is a simple point of logic that if propositions p and q are both true, then they are logically consistent, though not conversely. So if God exists and Evil exists are both true, then they are logically consistent, whence it follows that it is possible that they be consistent. This is so whether or…
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Some Questions About the Trinity Distinguished
It may help to distinguish the following questions. 1. Is there a clear scriptural basis for the doctrine of the Trinity? 2. Is the doctrine, as formulated in the Athanasian creed and related canonical documents, true? 3. Is it possible for human reason, unaided by divine revelation, to know the doctrine to be true? 4.…
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Does Trinity Entail Quaternity?
Christianity, like the other two Abrahamic religions, is monotheistic. But unlike Judaism and Islam, Christianity holds to a trinitarian conception of God. The idea, spelled out in the Athanasian Creed, is that there is one God in three divine Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Each person is God, and yet there…
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De Trinitate: The Statue/Lump Analogy and the ‘Is’ of Composition
Thanks to Bill Clinton, it is now widely appreciated that much rides on what the meaning of ‘is’ is. Time was, when only philosophers were aware of this. In our Trinitarian explorations with the help of our Jewish atheist friend Peter we have discussed the ‘is’ of identity and the ‘is’ of predication. We saw that…
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Is The Doctrine of the Trinity Logically Coherent? (Peter Lupu)
In this installment, Peter Lupu, atheist, defends the logical coherence of the doctrine of the Trinity. My critical comments follow in blue. It may be somewhat of an astonishment to those who know me well that I should venture to defend the doctrine of the Trinity. I am not a Christian; I am not religious;…
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Is There a ‘No God’ Delusion?
A certain popular writer speaks of a God delusion. This prompts the query whether there might be a 'No God' delusion. Is it perhaps the case that atheism is a delusion? Bruce Charlton, M. D. , returns an affirmative answer in Is Atheism Literally a Delusion? In this post I will try to understand his basic argument and…
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Generic and Specific Problems of Evil
(A reader requested a post on evil. I am happy to oblige. The following has some relevance to the recent soul thread. So I'll leave the ComBox open in case Peter L. or others care to comment. As usual, the default setting for cyberpunk tolerance = 0.) Suppose we define a 'generic theist' as one who affirms the…
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J. P. Moreland on Human Persons and the Failure of Naturalism (Part One)
(The following review will be crossposted shortly at Prosblogion. Comments are closed here, but will be open there.) Apart from what Alvin Plantinga calls creative anti-realism, the two main philosophical options for many of us in the West are some version of naturalism and some version of Judeo-Christian theism. As its title indicates, J. P.…
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How to Avoid God
C. S. Lewis, "The Seeing Eye" in Christian Reflections (Eeerdmans, 1967), pp. 168-167: Avoid silence, avoid solitude, avoid any train of thought that leads off the beaten track. Concentrate on money, sex, status, health and (above all) on your own grievances. Keep the radio on. Live in a crowd. Use plenty of sedation. If you…
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Imago Dei
Faciamus hominem ad imaginem et similitudinem nostram . . . (Gen 1, 26) Let us make man in our image and likeness. . . Et creavit Deus hominem ad imaginem suam. . . (Gen 1, 27) And God created man in his image. . . I used to play chess with an old man by…
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More with Mason on Miracles
Franklin Mason e-mails (mid-June 2007): I'd meant to get back to a little point you'd made a few days ago. You said this: "I think of creation as an ongoing 'process': God sustains the world in being moment by moment. But at each moment, the totality of what exists is completely determinate: for each individual…
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Kant on Divine Concurrence and Miracles as Complementa ad Sufficientiam
The question concerning the possibility of miracles is connected to a wider question concerning the relation of secondary or natural causes and the causa prima, God. How do these two 'orders' of causation fit together? 1. One extreme position is occasionalism according to which all causal power is exercised by God. For the occasionalist, God…
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Weil’s Wager
I In her New York Notebook from 1942, Simone Weil presents an argument which she claims “…is greatly preferable to Pascal’s wager.”[i] One of her commentators agrees, finding her argument “obviously both morally and intellectually” superior to Pascal’s.[ii] I will call this argument “Weil’s Wager.” As far as I know, it has yet to be…
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Kolakowski: No God, No Meaning
Leszek Kolakowski, Freedom, Fame, Lying, and Betrayal: Essays on Everyday Life (Westview 1999), pp. 116-117: . . . our reason naturally aspires to encompass the totality of being; and our will for order and our need to make sense of existence lead us instinctively to seek that which is both the root and the keystone…